Wild Wales

“ We have six miles of climbing before us, close under the heights of Cader Idris, through one of the wildest tracts of country in wild Wales, where the road at last rises steeply between rough stone walls across a desolate moor, and a mountain stream dashes below us on the right, and in all probability a flock of little Welsh sheep makes excitedly for the nearest gap. ”

“ Almost every dell and hamlet, every sylvan glade and mountain side of wild Wales abounds with legends and tales, stories of real life which are too interesting to be lost, and too important in the lessons they afford to remain hid in the bosom of members of our ancient race. ”

“ When the rest of Britain, at the end of the fifth century, had fallen into the hands of the English invaders and conquerors, the western part remained free. High among their mountains, these fierce tribes bade defiance to Angle, and Saxon, and Jute, and to them came for protection many of those who had been forced to flee for their lives from other parts of Britain. From that time this region came to be known by the English as Wales, the Land of Strangers; and thus was part of the prophecy concerning the whole people of Britain fulfilled:
“Their land they shall lose
Except Wild Wales.” ”

“ The story of the great struggle of Wales for freedom under a Prince of her own is laid, fitly enough, amid the wild scenery that surrounds the highest point in Southern Britain. The whole district of Snowdon, with its grim moorlands and towering heights forming a bulwark to the western shore, breathes an air of freedom, and it was here that the last Llewelyn defied the might of the first English Edward. ”

“ Beyond this village we climb through lovely woods of birch and larch, and then we run down, leaving the trees behind us, into the beautiful estuary of the Dyfi. A wide sea of gorse is at out feet; the river winds through the shallows beyond; and, bounding the valley and the view, rises the mighty wall of North Wales.
This is on the left—a wide and splendid landscape; and meanwhile on the right [Pg 150] are wild hills rising from the road, cleft here and there by narrow wooded gorges or tumbling mountain streams. ”

“ Changeling Welsh words are begot of elves and fairies. Even as those words are full of poetry, of romance, of a wild emotionalism,—the “Scream of the Celt” it has been called, but in Wales it is a subdued scream,—so, still, are the superstitions about fairies and elves living among these Welsh hills and valleys. Childish tales they may seem to you, if you are fortunate enough to be told anything about them at all by the Welsh peasants, who are both suspicious and shy of the “foreigner.” ”

“ Of its great lonely heart, tuneful only with the noise of waters, the bleat of sheep, and the plovers’ cry, of its romantic girdle of crag and wood, of little white-washed sycamore shaded homesteads and rude hoary shrines of British saints through which these bog-fed torrents break, the outer world knows absolutely nothing at all. Here, however, are about 600 to 800 square miles of more continuously wild upland than anything even in North Wales, all lying in a block, to which the counties of Montgomery, Radnor, Brecon, Cardigan, and Caermarthen each contribute a slice. ”

“ The magnificent scenery seems to create a pensive awe upon the spirit. Often the pedestrian, passing along a piece of unsuggestive road, suddenly finds that the stupendous mountains have sloped down, to valleys of the wildest, and most picturesque beauty, valley opening into valley, in some instances; in others, as in the vale of Glamorgan, stretching along, for many miles, in plenteous fruitfulness, and beauty, illuminated by some river like the Tivy, the Towy, or the Llugg, some of these rivers sparkling, and flashing with the glittering gleisiad, as an old Welsh song sings it ”

“ Certainly I shall never forget that first Welsh leg of mutton which I tasted, rich but delicate, replete with juices derived from the aromatic herbs of the noble Berwyn, cooked to a turn, and weighing just four pounds.
“O its savoury smell was great,
Such as well might tempt, I trow,
One that’s dead to lift his brow.”
Let any one who wishes to eat leg of mutton in perfection go to Wales, but mind you to eat leg of mutton only. Welsh leg of mutton is superlative; but with the exception of the leg, the mutton of Wales is decidedly inferior to that of many other parts of Britain. ”

“ I dreamt about a widely-different matter. Methought I was in Llangollen fair in the place where the pigs were sold, in the midst of Welsh drovers, immense hogs and immense men whom I took to be the gents of Wolverhampton. What huge fellows they were! almost as huge as the hogs for which they higgled; the generality of them dressed in brown sporting coats, drab breeches, yellow-topped boots, splashed all over with mud, and with low-crowned broad-brimmed hats. One enormous fellow particularly caught my notice. ”

“ WELSH FARM, NEAR LLANBERIS
105Slowly the fire and the ale constructed the world again, and though I could still see the snow from the hearth of the inn, it was as impotent as the frail moon which was convoyed down among the moorlands by dark and angry clouds, while I read—as now my reader does—this passage from Wild Wales:—
"'I suppose you follow some pursuit besides bardism?' said I; 'I suppose you farm?'
"'I do not farm,' said the man in grey. ”

“ To the east are the high lands of Cheshire, to the west the bold hills of Wales, and below, on all sides a fair variety of wood and water, green meads and arable fields.
“You may well look around, Measter,” said a waggoner, who, coming from the direction in which I was bound, stopped to breathe his team on the top of the hill; “you may well look around—there isn’t such a place to see the country from, far and near, as where we stand. Many come to this place to look about them.” ”

“ The bottom is a small grassy plain, dotted with trees, which has obtained the appellation of Beauty sleeping in the lap of Terror. The mountains that surround the vale have a wild and rugged appearance. As I proceeded along the road towards the head of the valley, a horn was sounded from the mountain, and I perceived a Welsh girl standing upon a projecting eminence: bare headed and bare footed was this nymph of Cambria; her cheeks were swelled out with her occupation, and she looked like a female Boreas, bursting with the wind she was sending forth by degrees to alarm the world. ”

“ Wales is a country interesting in many respects, and deserving of more attention than it has hitherto met with. Though not very extensive, it is one of the most picturesque countries in the world, a country in which Nature displays herself in her wildest, boldest, and occasionally loveliest forms. The inhabitants, who speak an ancient and peculiar language, do not call this region Wales, nor themselves Welsh. They call themselves Cymry or Cumry, and their country Cymru, or the land of the Cumry. ”

“ Oh, what strange tales are told of the owl, especially in connection with its long-lifedness; but of all the strange, wild tales connected with the age of the owl, strangest of all is the old Welsh tale. When I heard the owl’s cry in the groves of Pen y Coed, that tale rushed into my mind. I had heard it from the singular groom, who had taught me to gabble Welsh in my boyhood, and had subsequently read it in an old tattered Welsh story-book, which by chance fell into my hands. ”

“ And Wales, which seems itself in its nearness now only like a district of England, and that district for the most part wild and but scantily peopled,—can there be anything so remarkable about its pulpit work as to make it either capable or worthy of any separate account of its singularities and idiosyncrasies? To most English people Welsh preaching is a phase of religious life entirely unknown: thousands of tourists visit the more conspicuous highways of Wales from year to year, its few places of public resort or more manifest beauty ”

“ Of a country in the first predicament, the Scottish Highlands afford an example: What a country is that Highland region! What scenery! and what associations! If Wales has its Snowdon and Cader Idris, the Highlands have their Hill of the Water Dogs, and that of the Swarthy Swine: If Wales has a history, so have the Highlands—not indeed so remarkable as that of Wales, but eventful enough: If Wales has had its heroes, its Glendower and Father Pryce, the Highlands have had their Evan Cameron and Ranald of Moydart ”

“ These were the first goats which I had seen in Wales; for Wales is not at present the land of goats, whatever it may have been.
I passed under a crag exceedingly lofty, and of very frightful appearance. It hung menacingly over the road. With this crag the wall of rocks terminated; beyond it lay an extensive strath, meadow, or marsh bounded on the cast by a lofty hill. The road lay across the marsh. I went forward, crossed a bridge over a beautiful streamlet, and soon arrived at the foot of the hill. The road now took a turn to the right, that is to the south, and seemed to lead round the hill. ”

“ But Wales has something besides its wonderful scenery, its eventful history, and its illustrious men of yore to interest the visitor. Wales has a population, and a remarkable one. There are countries, besides Wales, abounding with noble scenery, rich in eventful histories, and which are not sparingly dotted with the birthplaces of heroes and poets, in which at the present day there is either no population at all, or one of a character which is anything but attractive. ”

“ As we have looked upon the singular sight of those trees, in the Man of Ross’s pew, we have often thought of those who, in Wales, planted in the house of the Lord, flourish in sacred, and sainted memories, in the courts of our God. ”

“ Seeing a woman of an interesting countenance seated at the door of a cottage I pointed to the hill towards the north, and speaking the Welsh language, inquired its name.
“That hill, sir,” said she, “is called Moel Wyn.”
Now Moel Wyn signifies the white, bare hill.
“And how do you call those two hills towards the east?”
“We call one, sir, Mynydd Mawr, the other Mynydd Bach.”
Now Mynydd Mawr signifies the great mountain and Mynydd Bach the little one.
“Do any people live in those hills?”
“The men who work the quarries, sir, live in those hills. They and their wives and their children. ”

“ It was, in fact, the “White Lion,” which still protrudes a battered and weather-beaten sign over the bye-street, while the “Saracen’s Head” stands boldly upon the main road. How he met the Italian who spoke Welsh, and on the morrow met the Irish fiddler with the game leg and the infernal cheek, let the pages of Wild Wales relate.
XLI The scattered cottages and old toll-house of Glasfryn bring one to Cernioge, the place to which the milestones have been insistently directing, since Corwen. ”

“ General tradition in Wales gives him this kind of eminence—poem, and proverb united in his sentences. We have not been able to obtain many instances of this; and we fear it must be admitted, that our language only in a clumsy way translates the pithy quaintness of the Welsh, such as the following: “The door of heaven shuts from below, not from above. ‘Your iniquities have separated, saith the Lord.’” “Of all the birds,” he once said, “the dove is the most easily alarmed, and put to flight, at hearing a shot fired. Remember,” he continued, “that the Holy Ghost is compared to a dove ”

“ I should have been loth to quit Wales without visiting the Deheubarth or Southern Region, a land differing widely, as I had heard, both in language and customs from Gwynedd or the Northern, a land which had given birth to the illustrious Ab Gwilym, and where the great Ryce family had flourished, which very much distinguished itself in the Wars of the Roses—a member of which Ryce ap Thomas placed Henry the Seventh on the throne of Britain—a family of royal extraction, and which after the death of Roderic the Great for a long time enjoyed the sovereignty of the south. ”

“ It ought to be mentioned, also, as quite as distinctly characteristic, that there is an intense clannishness prevalent throughout the Principality. Communication between the people has no doubt somewhat modified this; but, usually, an Englishman resident in Wales, and especially in the more sequestered regions, has seldom found himself in very comfortable circumstances. The Welsh have a suspicion that there are precious secrets in their land, and language, of which the English are desirous to avail themselves. ”

“ During the reign of king Henry I., when Wales enjoyed a state of tranquillity, the above-mentioned Maurice had a forest in that neighbourhood, well stocked with wild animals, and especially deer, and was extremely tenacious of his venison. His wife (for women are often very expert in deceiving men) made use of this curious stratagem. Her husband possessed, on the side of the wood next the sea, some extensive pastures, and large flocks of sheep. ”

“ From that day they were like other women, and kept one of the best of those inns—clean, tidy, comfortable and at modest prices—for which Wales is, or was, noted.
Neither as cats with paws, nor landladies, with soaring bills, did they ever rob travelers again.
IV HOW THE CYMRY LAND BECAME INHABITED
In all Britain to-day, no wolf roams wild and the deer are all tame.
Yet in the early ages, when human beings had not yet come into the land, the swamps and forests were full of very savage animals. ”